Pros
Excellent peers in general: at EPAM Hungary, thanks to the rigorous on-boarding process, most of your peers will have a solid professional skillset. So, if you plan to bootstrap your *technical* skills then it is a great place to be. Also, depending on your luck you may end up working with people who are great in soft skills too. EPAM is an equal opportunity employer, they take this seriously and this is a rare quality in any company. In majority of the cases your peers will be more on the collaborative side, rather than the competitive one. *** There are many fantastic people at EPAM and even your Average Joe colleague is going to be a friendly, cooperative guy. *** On a personal note: this is the reason why I stayed with the company - the combination of the above qualities are rarely found in a company with a 12K+ employee base. Interesting vertical domains: depending on your luck you may enjoy a variety of projects and learn tons of different technical / business domains in relative short time-spans. Travel: you will have plenty opportunities to travel around the world - if travel is your thing. In fact the expectation is to be able to travel on short notice. Room for experimentation: depending on your luck you may have the chance to work on projects where you can experiment with new ideas, methodologies, standards, technology, mgmt processes, mgmt styles, ... Opportunity to grow personally and learn: in case of a *technical* career you will be provided with clear expectations and a mature career development plan. EPAM is a stable, fair, reliable employer.
Cons
Strange peers: EPAM is growing like mushroom and in order to fulfill this rate of expansion the on-boarding process has been relaxed. In the past 3+ years the Budapest office started hiring people who wouldn't have made it to the company earlier. At the same time people with no or limited soft/social skills are routinely put in leadership positions. You can do the math. Growth is barely controlled: EPAM is becoming more and more of a money making factory as opposed to a problem solving think-tank. And it is still run as a garage company not knowing how to tackle the inherent complexity of rapid expansion. Typical symptoms: lack of *meaningful* company communication, rushed and last minute decisions, deliberately holding back information and keeping employees in the dark, lack of clear job responsibilities, lack of protection against difficult/hostile clients, relatively high attrition, the feeling of "I'm just another brick in the wall". Travel: once you established yourself as a trustworthy, knowledgeable employee with good communication skills then you will be asked to travel. Even if it is something you don't want to do. Time to time you won't have other choice but to travel. Don't worry, you will get financially compensated. Learning: depending on the specific projects you will work on you may either deepen your domain and/or technical knowledge or not. Too many times you will end up having only a shallow gain and ask yourself: "Why I wasted 1.5 years of my life on this project?" I left major issues to last. Lack of vision: EPAM does not have a vision. None, nada, zippo. If you are extremely lucky the leadership of your project organization will make an effort to compensate but you need to be very-very-very fortunate. From the functional organization you will get no vision whatsoever. After spending some time with EPAM you will wonder why this company exists in the first place besides making money? Over time you will develop a a sense of "doing things for the greater good" as a coping mechanism and defining a reason to motivate yourself to got to the office every morning - this prevents you from burning out and you will find bits of enjoyment doing your job. To be completely fair, you have to recognize that EPAM is in the professional services / system integration / outsourcing provider business which makes it really hard to come up with a truthful, meaningful, and future proof company wide vision. With regards to this topic a product/service development company is in a much better position. You will also realize that if the company was not able to find a believable vision in the past 20 years then it is unlikely that it will find one in the near future. Lack of company culture: asides being an equal opportunity employer and a global player (multi location, multi culture, ...) you won't get much. The only thing that will remind you of shared values is the code of conduct that you have to re-read and sign off every quarter. On the plus side the overall atmosphere in the ooffice is friendly and cooperative, and every now and then you will find senior peers who recognize the demoralizing effects of not having core company values and take action. You will also notice, eventually, that these actions are just futile guerrilla fights against a socially dull (or uninterested - hard to tell the difference) top mgmt and are not having a lasting effect. "Recommend this employer to a friend?" - to a *friend* I would not recommend the Budapest office of EPAM, there are far better choices by now in Hungary (Prezi, LogMeIn, loads of microglobal startups, ...) that offer the same opportunities on technical excellence and a friendly atmosphere as well as a sense of true ownership regarding your job. On the other hand, to those who want to start/bootstrap a professional career or for someone who's just after a reliable source of income in exchange for a 9to5 (9to6 in reality:) job, then yes, EPAM is a great place for you. There is an exception, a very good one: I wholeheartedly recommend the Debrecen office of EPAM Hungary to anyone. That office has managed to retain its human face against all odds, it is still operating as a problem solving think-tank most of the time, has superb teams, and it still maintains high standards when it comes to hiring new employees.
